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♪ ♪ ♪ >> buckeye broadband, along with these television companies, supports c-span2 as a public service. >> host: joining us now is journalist and author glenn greenwald, will be talking about his newest book, "securing democracy" interest in it, that glenn greenwald, we are at the libertarian freedom fast, festival in las vegas, and you're here. is her an oddity? >> guest: the deathly is an oddity. that's obvious that i've long been perceived as associate with the left and and i don't tht of people from that's true at this particular conference. the same time very early on when i began writing about politics

and my focus was concerns over bush-cheney executive power series and some of the trampling of civil liberties and the war on terror, i always had an audience not just on the left but also libertarians as well. my first book the first two that i would did was at the aclu and the second was at the cato institute so that gives you a flavor for our always managed have these various audiences, how do you do that? is aware the left and the right meet? >> guest: i think are more places where the left and right meet than either side likes to admit, and that the media typically conveys because i think what attracts standard media attention is when the left and right are fighting, and that obscures how many areas have in common. i think the parties have a lot more agreement than typically is observed and also the left and right in finding those areas of agreement trying to build coalition or fostered and through her work has definitely been a focal point from the begin. >> host: for people tuning in saint i know that name, give us

a sense of some of the issues you've worked on as a journalist over the years before get into your book. >> guest: when i first started, i didn't go to work at the "new york times" and i didn't go to columbia journalism school. i was a practicing lawyer focus on constitutional law and i really just one day it create blog. i was on google's free blogspot platform that allow bloggers to just be heard, find an audience and mostly focused on civil liberties issues connected with the war on terror, guantánamo, torture, rendition, drones when obama became president. it was a fairly narrow range of issues on which i focus, and over the years it began to expand but i still have that anchor there and i i think the reporting for which we can best don't and the united states was when the whistleblower edward snowden contacted me in 2012 and said that a large batch of documents he wanted to give me time and we did that. >> host: how did he get hold

of you? did you have any, did you of any previous conversations with him? >> guest: no. he had been a reader of mine for years and was attracted to me nuts was because of my views on privacy and surveillance, though those aligned with this, but i had always, , i had become a somewhat vocal media critic and was particularly critical of the media in the bush years to be too close to and deferential to u.s. security state rather than adversarial with it. and he found that as an adjuvant sort the, i had no idea who he was and he knew at the time that the nsa was spying fine r communications domestically, and he contacted me with the pseudonym and was very reluctant to say much about who he was and what he had for obvious reasons. until i installed very good encryption technology.

it took us a while to establish a relationship because of that. once is able to talk to him and what he found a secure environment he told me by that point he was in hong kong, that he had come to hong kong with enormous batch of documents hit taken from an essay that he believed revealed very grave illegalities and violations of the constitution and one to work with me and looked reveal an important one be to get a line on a flight to flight hong kong. i need you to put me that there's a litter these there's anything general and about what you're saying. he said all share with you a tiny portion of the document i have. he sent me 20 top-secret dawkins the most secret agency in the world, the first time there'd been a lick of any kind from the nsa and you say i called my editor and said i need to get on the plane and fly them easily to hong kong in which a did within 366 hours and spent 12 or 13 days with him there in hong kong.

>> host: did you ever visit with them in russia? >> guest: i did visit him in 2016, so maybe two or three years after the reporting period he never wanted to be in russia. he'd always intend to pass to rush on his way to latin america. the obama administration dropped in their, revoking his passport, bullied the cubans out of resending passage which you need in order to get to latin america. so is been in russia for yourself when i visited he was still hoping one day to be able to leave. by now he's married an american girlfriend, they have too much children children of the second building a life there. he still hope to come home but it began i think he's content with a life he is chosen. >> host: there's a real debate in this country about julian assange, edward snowden and chelsea manning, heroes or villains? >> guest: so to me there's no real debate. one of the things that i

discovered in my work as a journalist that it didn't previously know was the true extent to which virtually everything in washington is done behind a wall of secrecy. obviously almost everybody agrees that some things the government that should be secret if they are true movements in the war give a right to keep that secret. if it's a grand jury investigation you do want to -- by and large we ought to know what our government is doing and out in a very little about what we're doing. that's the idea and becomes completely reversed within everything of us i went almost nothing the government isn't because of this wall of secrecy that erected first fighting communism been fighting terrorism and the whole that people like assange and snowden and chelsea manning are devoted to the idea that in a democracy it's necessary not everything but the important things that what the committee is doing otherwise how can we had a meaningful election that we are voting for leaders or parties when you don't know anything about what you're doing.

i think as long as it's done responsibly and snowden didn't just throw it on on the unit. he came to us with very clear instructions about making sure we never publish anything that could jeopardize anybody's lives. julian assange worked with the "new york times" with regarding, the largest newspapers in the world to protect lives and other legitimate interest of innocent people. so as long as it's done responsibly that kenny is a pure heroism. they're risking their lives to inform the citizenry about things we ought to know. >> host: glenn greenwald, that is some of your american experience but now you've taken your job to brazil. how did you get down there? >> guest: i had been visiting brazil quite a bit in the late 90s and early 2000s. i was working as as a lawyerw york at the time, and really just a place we all find this place is that resonate with our soul that speak to us. i was always overwhelmed by its beauty but then in 2005 i went there i intend just day

seven weeks. i met my now husband of 17 years. at the time the defense of marriage act was a law under clinton years. .. they've erected first in the name of fighting communism then in the name of fighting terrorism and our whole variety of other justifications and people like assange and snowed in and chelsea manning are devoted to the idea that in a democracy. it's necessary that the citizenry learn not everything but the important things about what their government is doing. otherwise, how can we even have a meaningful election and we're voting for leaders or parties when we don't actually know anything about what they're doing and i think as long as it's done responsibly and you know snowden didn't just throw it all in the internet he came to us and very clear instructions about making sure we never publish anything that jeopardize anybody's lives julian assange early on pe >> your most recent book is securing democracy. fight for press freedom and justice in bolsonaro brazil. >> i had some clashes with jair bolsonaro, he was a member of congress for 30 years and kind of say an aoc or a marjorie

taylor greene. he wasn't in the seat of power, but he would make statements and do it in a way that drew a lot of intentions and that's not necessarily the way that the politicians normally spoke and carried him to the presidency, much like donald trump and his style, how rare it was. and there was one in particular, where it was expressed to me that he harbored fascist sentiment and he made crude references to my being gay and we've had an adversarial relationship, my husband is part of an opposition party to bolsonaro and clashes with him, my husband with him and officials. and 2019 on mother's day i was contacted by a woman named manuela, and the vice-presidential nominee who ran against bolsonaro in 2018

and she lost. she had been contacted by a hacker who claims that he had obtained an enormous archive of files that he had taken from the phones of some of brazil's most powerful judges and prosecutors, revealing serious criminality and wrongdoing and she put me in contact with him and it was a similar story that i had with edward snowden, anonymous source and when we began doing the reporting, it caused destabilization of the bolsonaro government and it went from crude insults about my sexual orientation to explicit threats of imprisonment from the president himself. death threats from his movement and security problems over the course of 18 month or so he became kind of enemy number one, public enemy number one of the bolsonaro movement kind of at the peak of his power. >> what was operation car wash? >> operation car wash was a

gigantic anti-corruption probe poe lengthily the largest in the democratic world that began by accident in 2014 when a money launderer got caught in a trivial crime through a car wash and hence the name operation car wash. when they arrested him, you don't believe what i had, i'm not just a money launderer, i'm the money launderer for the politicians in the country and most of whom are deeply corrupt and i'll help you discover all of their dirty secrets in exchange for leniency for this crime you just caught me engaging in. and it was at first, kind of a moving story because it is true, and everyone acknowledges that brazil since it came out of the military dictatorship in 1985 has been run by systemic corruption.

in the u.s. we talk about corruption, a single congressman gets a bribe, baby a lobbyists doesn't file a right form. systemic corruption, no laws gets passed without money in the swiss bank accounts and this is how business are done. and the judge assigned to oversee the case were young mid to late 30's, early 40's at most and they had been born into brazilian democracy not the dictatorship and they took that we're supposed to operate under the rule of law not the banana republic in the mid '60s and the cold war regime. and the narrative attractive to the media, young crusading prosecutors wanted to clean up the country and put into prison using the original kind of niche, billionaires. and some of the most powerful people in the country. and of course, brazilians and

really, everybody kind of moved to see that. like, oh, finally instead of putting young black drug dealers into jail we'll get the real criminals not buying hundreds of dollars at a time, but hundreds of millions, they're going to prison. and sergio was the judge overseeing it and young prosecutors became national heroes in brazil. no one more popular than they for say next three to four years, 2014. and they basically ran the country and sergio marro was nationally celebrated and one of time 100, only brazilian on the list on the cover of magazines all over the world and the power that they had as the anti-corruption probe expanded became larger than any person should have let alone a

judge and prosecutors who had been elected and things started to become a bit more controversial. there were questions about whether they were selectively prosecuting for ideological and political reasons and that was kind of a context to which our source came to us and said, that was -- that was the phones they had invaded were sergio morrow's and the prosecutors and prove that they've been corrupt all along and how they've conducted the investigation. >> where is sergio today? >> well, so, one of the most important things that the car wash probe did is that, in 2017, as bolsonaro was preparing to run for president, the main obstacle in his pass was luis de silva, president from 2002, 2010, charismatic, former labor leader, and left

office 86% of approval rating and people out of poverty and planning to run again in 2017. and polls showed him 15, 20 points ahead of bolsonaro and he ended up not running because sergio morrow found him guilty of multiple charges of corruption and sentenced him to 12 years to prison and paved the way of bolsonaro's victory. the first thing he did, he elevated sergio from role of local judge, a federal judge, first level and made him the minister of justice and public security, second post powerful position in brazil and that was when we began our reporting was sergio was. a kind of unity of fans, and he ended up leaving the government a year and a few months after he became-- he joined it, and went out shooting, claiming that jair

bolsonaro was himself completely corrupt and tried to criminally interfere in various police investigations and his children, who were all adults and elected officials, charged with corruption, and so he flipped from the bolsonaro movement and came to the u.s., made a lot of money and they're out of prison and running for president. the presidential candidate was kind after flop. he pulled out before it even began and he now announcing that he's going to run for the senate, as kind of a critic of both who we put in prison and bolsonaro was aligned with and now is accusing of being corrupt. >> let's go back to lula de silva. in your view and your connection to that, was he guilty of the corruption he was put in prison for? >> the reason, it's hard to say because he never got a fair

trial. there's no question that lula's party, the workers party was corruption, and pushed him to acknowledge that before in interviews. as i said earlier, brazil is a country that doesn't have occasional instances of corruption, but run systematically on corruption and the workers party and lula himself vl having been in the middle of it, nothing you can go done unless you have the wheels of corruption machine. and how much did lula personally profit from corruption is something we don't know the answer to because the trial he got was a show trial. it was a trial in which sergio morrow all along was plotting in secret with prosecutors is what our reporting showed to convict lula regardless of the evidence. i don't know the answer to that, but i do know that there's no doubt that lula's government and party was

heavily interacting with and dependent upon the system of corruption that's also run brazila. >> what is your connection to lula? >> you know, i interviewed lula for the first time in 2016. >> was he in prison at the time? >> he was not in the prison and he had hand picked a woman from his party to be the first female president della russa. and by this point she'd gotten reelected barely in the middle of the second 0 term and this economic boom he benefitted from turned into economic collapse under her presidency, so there was a serious impeachment effort underway i was opposed to. when i interviewed him by that point the anti-corruption probe was not just aimed at her, but him. and my interview with him, no one thought that lula would be in prison. it's like a country putting their greatest icon in prison,

but they were trying. the interview was the context, the impeachment and raising the possibility that he would be prosecuted potentially, and ironically, i had tried to interview lula when he was in prison during 2018, but the supreme court rejected our request. they didn't want lula being heard during the election because they knew if the public could hear from him, his voice, he could sway the election and that's how much of a hold he has on the brazilian people and only when bolsonaro was elected in 2018 did they finally grant my request. >> the supreme court granted your request. >> the supreme court granted my request and the prison authorities rejected it so we appealed to the supreme court. so, about a week or two after i got contacted by for the interview with lula had been scheduled. it was scheduled before the source contacted me and i interviewed him from prison and i couldn't tell him what we had and he was protesting his

innocence. needless to say once we began doing the reporting that proved that the judge that had convicted him, the prosecutors who prosecuted him were all along corrupt. he was free from prison three months after we began the reporting and he was very grateful, i was the first phone call he made when he got released from prison and got home to sao paolo and he was publicly was appreciative, but you know, my husband belongs to a left wing party that was born out of opposition to the workers party. they kind of criticized from the left and so the way the green party criticizes the democrats. it was a party that protested the workers party corruption so our political connection was never so close. i was never a supporter of the workers party, but when someone's reporting gets you out of prison and that reporter is being threatened with prison as a result, your relationship is going to improve. so we had a good relationship for, you know, a year or so

once he got out of prison. >> when it the brazilian presidential election? and is lula still favored? >> and the presidential election is october, and three months away, a little lows. ap polls show lula the overwelcoming favorite and brazil's electoral system is frances where multiple candidates run and if no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, the two top candidates go to a runoff. it's very possible according to current polling data that lula could win in the first round. i think one other person has done that, but it's very, very rare. he's well ahead of bolsonaro and other candidates and the favored to win and extraordinary the last election he was in prison under a 10-year prison term. now not only out of prison, but poised to return to power. >> glenn greenwald, you

mentioned that the supreme court of brazil denied your request to interview lula. is there a free press in brazil comparable to the u.s.'s? >> there is in the sense that the constitution that brazil enacted when it emerged out of the 21-year military dictatorship was based in part on the u.s. model shall the constitutional model and also use european models and more robust protection for press freedom in the brazilian constitution than the u.s. constitution. it includes, for example, source protection rights for the journalists can't be obliged to identify their source. and on paper, there's a very robust, free press protection. in process, the problem has been because of the grotesque

inequality, there are ol gashiy oligarchy and pluralism in the media and changing because. internet and the audiences don't have to own a printing press or tv network, it's improved. and when i did the reporting that i did, and the bolsonaro government attempt today imprison me and indicted me. the only reason i'm able to talk to you knew instead of from a prison cell, the supreme court shielded me based on the ground of a free press. and lula not granting interview, if you want to interview julian assange in the british prison, you haven't heard from him for three years he's barred. being interviewed, they won't let him be photographed and the prison

security, the one that the rest uses as readily as the brazilians are using it, to bar the interview with lula. it sounds drastic, but something that we have in the u.s. and the u.k. as well. >> mr. greenwald, is your brazilian source has he or she ever been identified? >> the federal police announced that they found the source and arrested a ring of six people they claim are responsible for that hacking. the person they accused of having been my source had publicly assumed responsibility for that. i've never confirmed or denied it in part because i never knew the identity of my source. i have my suspicions, but if the source wants to say that they're the one who did it that's their right, but i'm not going to help the government by saying i believe it is or isn't. when you received those documents in brazil, did it feel like deja vu all over again from a brazilian perspective?

>> completely. i remember, i asked when i was called by congress about this issue, i asked whether she would be okay with my husband participating in the call just because it was obviously a call of high intensity and importance. and i speak fluent portugese, but you want to make sure when you're extra important you're not missing anything. and he participated in the call ap after we hung up i said to david who helped me a lot in the case, and in london at one point as part of that reporting. i said to him, well, look, we've already been through this once before so if we're going to have this advantage that we've gone through this and they haven't and david said, no, i think you're really thinking about this incorrectly. the last time we did it, the people angry at us, the government's angry at us were thousands of miles on the other side of an ocean, whereas this time the government that's angry at us is literally right on the corner and much more dangerous and difficult, and much more-- and much riskier and one point

joked and said, can't they get anybody other than you to get the archives, why does it have to be you? and our life was turned upsidedown and again. for me it was deja vu and he was trying hard to get me to see that this is going to be more dangerous. >> how close did you come to being physically injured or going to prison? >> well, so from pretty much from the very first moment that we began the reporting, we were getting the kind of death threats that aren't the sort of death threats that public figures these days often complain about where someone on twitter or in your e-mail says you're going to get what's coming to you. these are very, very detailed death threats. here is your address, the front of your car, we know where your kids go to school. very, very alarming and clearly people who had access to private data and obviously in the government and the security

forces. we had to turn our house into basically a fortress, but we didn't leave our house for two years without armed security and armored vehicles and the like. we had a very good friend who was a city council woman who served on the city council with david, franco, who had been murdered assassinated earlier in 2018 and so we took the threats seriously. whenever i appeared in public, extreme levels of security were necessary. one time i went to a book fair and they made me speak in the middle of the water on a boat because they were concerned about my security speaking on land and even there there were a group of followers shooting fireworks at the boat, trying to set the boat on fire. and i was physically assaulted once by a very famous journalist from brazil who became a fanatic-- >> tell us that story. >> i had-- because you have a picture of it in the book. >> yeah, i had just like i do,

appear on fox news a lot or left wing networks as well, and essentially have a philosophy as a journalist you should speak to as many people as you can. there's a right wing network in brazil that's grown rapidly and connected itself to the bolsonaro movement and invited me on and i'd gone on in the middle of the reporting so the tension was at its highest and the mood was extremely angry in general and particularly with me and there's this journalist who had been in the mainstream a long time. editor of brazil's largest news weekly and about section weeks prior to my going there he had gone on the air, six weeks prior, and said essentially that my husband and i should have our children taken from us, we should be investigated by the adoption agency because how can we take care of our children when i'm working with stolen documents and he's in brazilea and homophobic remarks

and something that you would say about a heterosexual couple, but your children should be one limit in political warfare and i was extremely angry about that. and last minute we'd like to put him on the show with you, do you mind? no, i don't mind because i wanted to confront him. and they sat us millimeters away and couldn't have a more combustible atmosphere and before the show began, look, before we begin, i'm not going to talk about issues and i clear the air and i demand you either, you know, reaffirm your comments about our children we adopted and he refused to retract it and from there, he spontaneously took his arm and tried to hit my face and i

blocked it and we'd stood up and he pushed my face, again, this is live on the air, not only on radio, but also on television and needless to say the internet exploded, but there's really significant part of it was, there were the most prominent members of the bolsonaro movement, congress, and president's sons not only cheered and supported what he did, oh, it should have been a chair he used or a closed fist. these people want to introduce violence into political discourse and gives you a sense of the real tension and danger of that moment for the reporting we were doing and for the country as a whole glenn greenwald, why should we hear in the states care about securing democracy in brazil? >> the u.s. has always cared a great deal about brazil. the 1964 coup that led to the overthrow of the democracy elected government was epg

engineered by the cia along with generals, and the years that followed supported by the u.s., brazil is an important country strategically. there were enormous oil reserves as the middle east is depleted, brazil's harder to extract. sixth largest country in the world in terms of population, second largest in the hemisphere and probably the single most environmental resource in the amazon. so, if you're somebody who cares about the world at all. cares about the united states at all, you really need to care about brazil in terms of the direction in which it's going and influences the region greatly. but also brazil is one of the leaders of the world, bric with china, india and russia and south america, and bric.

that was intended and tended to be a counter weight to the u.s. and the world. and it's impossible to overstate brazil's importance, and in general, i think that countries are more connected now than ever before because of the internet and if one country kind of takes an undemocratic path, it's easy for that to influence other countries to follow in course. >> the media here in america is trying to figure you out. were you were called tucker carlson's mouth piece by the nation's magazine, he's a friend of your, you're here at libertarian convention. what have you got for us? >> you know, i think if you're a journalist and people can't figure out into which box they should or could place you, to me it's a testament to doing your job.

i don't so my role as attaching myself to any particular faction or an ideological spokesperson. if i wanted to do that i would become a poitician or a party. and everything we just talked about involved by confronting one of the most right wing governments in the world and freeing from prison one of the leftest icons in lula de silva. i've long been a fan of people like jeremy corbin and jeanne luc and bolivia, i interviewed immediately after he was a victim of a coup. i think what's actually happening, is left-right categories in the united states are eroding very rapidly. you know, is the idea of opposing n.a.t.o. and u.s. involvement in the war in ukraine a left or a right wing idea? is the idea of opposing gigantic big tax monopolies on

the internet, a left wing or a right wing idea? it's increasingly more difficult to place people in these categories and i'm glad it is. >> this is your seventh book? >> my sixth book. >> where can people read you today now that you're no longer with the --. >> as mentioning big tech censorship, there's an area, a sector that's devote today free speech and i do my writing on sub stack that guarantees free speech. i do journalist on a youtube competitor called rumble. and obviously, on social media, a sort of obligation if you have a multi-platform like twitter and various programs, left wing shows youtube plastics and joe rogan as well. so i around. glenn greenwald, securing

democracy, my fight for press freedom and justice in bolsonaro's brazil. thank you for joining us on book tv. >> it's a pleasure talking to you, thank you for having me. >> if you're enjoying book tv. sign up for our newsletter with the qr code on the screen. for author discussions, book festivals and more, book tv anytime online at book tv.org, television for serious readers. listening to programs on c-span through c-span radio just got easier. tell your smart speaker play c-span radio and listen to washington journal daily at 7 a.m. eastern, important congressional hearings and other public affairs throughout the day and weekdays at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. eastern, catch washington today for a fast-paced report for stories of the day and listen anytime. tell your smart speaker, play